


Entropy

by glowsdicks



Series: Entropy [1]
Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: F/M, M/M, deviations from canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-17 23:37:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowsdicks/pseuds/glowsdicks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Megaera Hawke is not a maleficar.</p>
<p>She is a spiritual naturalist; a student of demonology and empyrean biology. Not a blood mage, and certainly not an abomination. Unfortunately, due to her penchant for entropic magic and inherent fascination with all things celestial, she often finds herself putting on an excellent show to the contrary.</p>
<p>She imagines it’s the same frustration Fade spirits feel when they’re accused of being demons. The line has a way of being so fine that the unlearned can scarcely tell the difference, and so it’s no wonder that she finds herself so drawn to Justice - an unfortunate Fade spirit trapped in the mortal realm.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But, while Megaera strives to understand the complexity of a Fade spirit, Justice finds himself similarly befuddled over the tumultuous workings of the human mind and all its wonders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entropy

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there. This is a fanfiction written for the tumblr http://glowsdicks.tumblr.com and is a collaborative effort by insipid-drivel and f0rmaldehyde-art. For the love of all that is good and sacred, visit http://glowsdicks.tumblr.com/entropy-ch1 to see some amazing art coupled with the original source of this fic.
> 
> As a warning: there will be nudity. There will be feels. There will also be theorycrafting, deviations from canon, and a rather unconscionable amount of sad, glowing people.

“Your name?” she asked, her voice barely above a smooth susurrus that still managed to echo on the dense, dreamscape air.

 

“Temerity,” the demon replied with a confident, swarthy smirk. The expression was a strange contorting of its bestial maw that bared teeth that would rival those of a high dragon. Unfazed, she simply smiled in return and pinched her lips into a narrow line as she looked the massive Pride demon up and down with a critical eye.

           

Megaera bowed her head and took up her quill, writing the name with a smooth flick of her wrist at the header of her empty journal page. The demon’s breath rustled the delicate parchment in her hands, but she found the creature’s proximity neither alarming nor unsettling. “Am I correct in assuming that you’ve come to offer me a means of conquering the Blight and reviving Lothering from its razed ashes?”

           

A low, rumbling chuckle rippled across her vision like stones plunging into the surface of a pond. “Indeed,” Temerity replied, edging in closer until his massive, lumbering figure blocked out the light from the pale Fade sky. “You have power, little one, but not the will. Would you not wish to see the golden farmlands and verdant hillsides again? You need only escort me there, and it will be done.”

           

“How tall are you?” Megaera asked abruptly, squinting up at the massive demon and screwing up her face pensively. “Twelve? Thirteen feet tall?”

           

Temerity paused, its wicked smile wavering as a curious glower took its place. “Fifteen. Why?”

           

Her eyes snapped to the page, and the demon could see her quietly mouth “fifteen” under her breath as she began sketching what appeared to be a rough scale. Without another word, she set to work deftly scribbling a faint silhouette the demon quickly recognized was meant to be its own form. “What are you doing? Are you… drawing me?” Temerity asked with a balking snort.

           

“Yes. Hold still,” she tutted as one large, ebon eye came into shape upon the vellum. “What color would you say your carapace is in direct sunlight?”

           

Temerity let loose a low, displeased snarl. “Are you having me on, mortal?”

           

“I can assure you that I am perfectly serious. Would you liken the shade more toward the purple of a sunset, or a foxglove? A tanzanite, perhaps? Yes, I think tanzanite would suit you…” she trailed off, quickly jotting down the words _“tanzanite – matte finish”_ in the margin of her journal entry.

 

This time, the rumbling and snarling from the demon was low and loud enough to distort her vision. She had never enjoyed that about the Fade; how the atmosphere was so dense that simply speaking too loud would warp her vision as though she were capable of seeing the sound waves as they issued. “Would you mind lowering the volume a little? It’s making it terribly difficult to draw.”

 

She felt rather than saw Temerity raise its massive, clawed arm in an attempt to strike her down. “I will not be taken lightly, human!” the demon boomed.

 

“Nor will I, Temerity,” she sighed, snapping her fingers.

 

The demon’s arm withered and fell from its shoulder like rotted wood.

 

The agonized howling was enough to make her ears burn. Wincing, Megaera clapped her hands over her ears. “Again with the noise! Maker’s sake, begone if you’re going to be such a nuisance!” she yelled over the shrieking pitch of Temerity’s wails.

 

A final, guttural scream from the demon rippled the Fade so violently it shattered altogether. Jolting awake with a start, Megaera scowled at the half-completed sketch in her lap and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Pride demons...” she muttered spitefully, clapping her journal shut with finality and tucking it back in her nearby rucksack. “Waste of perfectly good lyrium.”

 

Her spine ached from yet another night spent on the cold, rocky ground. Even with her bedroll and the heavy oilcloth canvas of her tent, it was nigh impossible to find any sort of restful sleep with the bitter, frigid Ferelden nights. How was she supposed to go about her studies when she could scarcely focus beyond her own discomfort? It was ridiculous. Ridiculous!

 

With a vindictive _pop_ from her disgruntled back, Megaera waded through a small lake of empty, discarded lyrium bottles and crawled out from her miserable little tent. The campfire had long ago died down to barely-warm embers and the horizon showed no sign of dawning. If she had to venture a guess, she’d say it was rounding on four bells.

 

Early.

 

Too early.

 

Looking out over the valley below, the lights of Amaranthine glimmered faintly beneath the dense fog that had rolled in during the night. They still had nearly half a day’s journey to the heart of the arling, but one - she hoped - would be well worth it. The Blight had been defeated, the Archdemon slain, and word had reached her ears that her cousin, the Hero of Ferelden, had come away from the battle alive and newly-appointed as Warden Commander of the Grey Wardens. _Not bad for a Circle mage,_ she thought with a small smirk.

 

Lothering had been completely destroyed in the wake of the darkspawn hordes after the disastrous Battle of Ostagar. It had been there that Megaera Hawke had been born and raised; there that she had come into her magic, and there that she had spent countless nights hidden beneath floorboards with Malcolm Hawke when the templars came knocking.

 

Those floorboards were no doubt ashes by now. The rotted spot on her bedside table where she had first discovered her aptitude for entropic magic would be nothing but charred wood. The floor molding behind which she had once hidden her first diary entry about demons in her dreams was nothing but splinters.

 

Ironic that a master of decay would have her entire world desecrated.

 

But no matter; there was little to be done about it now. In a way, it was almost soothing knowing that, rather than being forced to abandon her belongings, they were instead utterly destroyed. Looters would find little value in embers.

 

However, what _wasn’t_ soothing was the fact that they had been walking for over two weeks straight with absolutely _no_ evidence of even a half-decent waterfall in sight. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a proper bath, much less a haphazard scrub. Despite taking no issue at the stench of rotting flesh, she was actually beginning to offend _herself._

 

Which was precisely the reason why she absolutely refused to share a tent with _Carver._ She couldn’t even stand walking down wind of the sweaty chav. It didn’t matter that her tent was freezing at night without another person to share it with her. She would rather freeze to death than wallow in her brother’s toxic musk.

 

But Amaranthine was in sight, and she would gladly throw herself down the city wellspring if she couldn’t weasel her way into Cousin Orrin’s bath. No doubt the Hero of Ferelden had some of the finest accommodations the city could offer at his disposal. Her toes curled at the very thought of it. _Indoor plumbing. Soap. Lyrium. Actual pants!_

 

Perhaps she wouldn’t have to wait to throw herself into a public water source. Closing her eyes and allowing her mind to seamlessly melt into the peaceful darkness before dawn, she could swear she heard the faint sound of running water somewhere nearby. Indeed; hidden beneath the smell of coals from the fire and Carver’s pervasive stink, she could make out the scent of fresh water she hadn’t noticed yesterday.

 

She should have hastily thrown on her scattered armor. Should have left some sort of indication as to where she was going, or even simply woken Carver (because, despite her claims at being mild and soft-spoken, a part of her did secretly revel in her brother’s discomfort), but the prospect of an hour-long dip in a river sang with a sweeter song than that of common sense. She couldn’t even be bothered to carry her staff along with her.

 

Diving headlong into the forest with the moon on her back and the smell of water filling her nose, she sprinted. After so many days of plodding along a dusty road, she couldn’t help but run as fast as her legs could carry her; to feel the boughs of trees whip past her face, to tangle in her hair; to feel the sublime exhilaration of sweat on her skin and aching in her lungs as she ran _for fun_ rather than for life or death was divine. How long had it been since she had the chance to run a forest chasing the shadows, rather than as the one being chased?

 

The burning in her legs, the brackish green of the nighttime weald, and the muted splinters of moonlight pouring in from overhead proved better than any Fade-given dream she’d had in sixteen days. She smiled; so wide and sweet it was a wonder that she wasn’t staring into the face of the Maker Himself. It made the magic woven in her bones and sinew roar to life and tingle like a billion pinpricks beneath her skin.

 

The prize for her haste came in the form of a tranquil stream glittering beneath the glow of the pregnant moon. Her heels skidded on the sandy shore and she cast her tunic to the grass behind her before she’d even stopped completely. Her holey, worn trousers were around her ankles in a flash before she had finished kicking off her boots, and she very nearly garrotted herself on her breastbind in her fervor of tearing it over her head.

 

The water was cold enough to take her breath away, but it hardly bothered her. For a long moment, she simply reclined in the embrace of the cool river water and watched as her hair formed a lazy, silvery halo around her head.

 

Too many years of lyrium abuse for the sake of outings to the Fade had resulted in a rather intriguing side effect: silvering. Everything from the tone of her skin, the color of her hair, and the shade of her eyes had taken on a profound, striking shade of pale pewter.

 

She had hoped that, perhaps with enough time and lyrium, she would be able to expand her mind enough to enter the Fade on her own... but the changes resulting from her experiments had proven to be purely cosmetic. Encumbering, even; for part of the reason she and her family had chosen to quit Lothering and travel as far north as possible was because the templars had begun specifically looking for a silver-haired apostate.

 

The river gradually carried her downstream, but not so far as to disorient her from where she had scattered her clothes on the shore. She righted herself; taking a small amount of secret pleasure at the sensation of fine sand between her toes and smooth river rocks under her heels. The wind carried with it the scent of early-morning hearths as the sky began to turn faintly sallow with the nearing sunrise.

 

Carver didn’t bother with rising early, but Leandra did. The Hawke family would be on the move soon, and the last thing she needed was a sound scolding from her mother for running off in the night. Megaera may have been a woman fully grown, but even she blanched at the thought of being chastised by the great and terrible Leandra Hawke.

 

She would blanch even moreso at the sudden, fetid stench of darkspawn on the wind.

 

With scarcely any time for her to even emerge from the river, the greenwood began to shake and shudder. Putrid snarling and gnashing teeth heralded the appearance of six of some of the most arse-ugly hurlocks she’d seen since Lothering. They swung their swords, sneered with vicious glee, and leered at her with something more than just murder in their eyes.

 

Megaera threw up her hands. _Of course_ she had to swim in the nude.

 

The first came in twos; blades pointed at her throat as if to give her some manner of choice between immediate death or something far more intolerable. After all, what could a poor, naked woman with neither staff nor blade in hand do?

 

But if that was the game they would place upon the table, then she had no choice but to play.

 

Slowly, she lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. The two darkspawn that had initially threatened her sidled in, swords still high, but their grasp easing. _Closer, now. That’s it._

 

The tip of a crudely-forged blade flicked a lock of damp hair away from her chest and came to hover near the hollow of her throat. The other darkspawn lowered its blade altogether.

 

Megaera’s hand shot out, batting the flat of the sword away in a serpent-quick strike.

 

She spun in; her elbow cracking hard into the hurlock’s jaw as she wrenched the sword from its hand. Her subsequent whirl would cleave the second hurlock’s head cleanly from his shoulders. The third spin would return her stolen sword to its owner by means of sheathing it into its chest.

 

“Let the game begin,” she purred, silver eyes glimmering from beneath a curtain of ebon blood.

 

The four remaining hurlocks charged; no longer seeing a hapless victim, but a dangerous enemy. Megaera flashed a satisfactory smile that didn’t quite touch her eyes as she retrieved both swords from her fallen captors. She spun them in her hands, and in the haze of the brilliant moonlight, a crimson glow radiated from hilt to tip.

 

One hurlock discovered first-hand that the glow was more than a simple warning. With a tiny, shallow cut across its cheek came a horrendous, necrotic poison that rotted into its flesh and poisoned its veins. The darkspawn shrieked; clutching its face as flesh peeled from bone and came loose in disgusting, rotten chunks in the creature’s hands.

 

Another darkspawn attempted to run her through from behind, but a single look into the human’s horrible pewter eyes invoked a sensation of fear so great that it couldn’t help but scream and weep.

 

And then its head was rolling across the grass.

 

The remaining two hurlocks attempted to charge her in tandem; swords raised high and cries of battle and bloodlust in their throats. She threw down her weapons and darted forward in a rush of silver and blood and tremendous, withering magic potent enough to knock them both flat. Leaping upon them, Megaera clapped her hands over their hideous, scarred faces.

 

With cold, calculating control, the evil crimson of her magic ate away at skin, at muscle, at bone, and finally - with a profound silence - brain.

 

Only one hurlock remained. Rolling on its back and clutching at its rotten face, the first hurlock to approach her did nothing to either attack or retreat. Dying flesh and bone had a way of being terribly painful, and she watched with a clinical interest as the unfortunate darkspawn plucked its own features from its face.

 

And then, in a blur of motion that surprised even her, it was dead.

 

She cocked an eyebrow as a seventh creature rose up from the shadows wielding a fine sword that had put an end to the darkspawn’s misery. Gaunt, hollow, but with eyes burning with bone-pale light, the swordsman turned his piercing, otherworldly eyes to her. _Not a darkspawn,_ she surmised, cocking one eyebrow.

 

Tense, wary silence passed between them; the too-frail man glowering at her in derision. He wore the armor of a Grey Warden, she realized, but certainly not the features of one. His face was too drawn-in, as though his skin was growing too tight for his face. His limbs were too skinny. Stranger still, his eyes were those of a dead man’s.

 

“You are no Grey Warden,” Megaera stated, narrowing her eyes curiously. “But you wear the flesh of one.”

 

“You used blood magic to vanquish these darkspawn,” he accused with a plaintive leer. He stomped forward, stopping short of being within arms’ reach of her, and looked her over. However, there was no lust in his eyes. He simply seemed to study her. “Are you a demon of some kind? An abomination?” he asked as the first inch of his sword flashed from its sheath.

 

“You are wrong on all counts,” she snapped, folding her arms over her chest and turning away from him. “What you saw was not blood magic, and I am not so pathetic as to rely upon the graces of a demon to pick off darkspawn.”

 

“Mages cannot use magic without the benefit of a staff,” he insisted.

 

“There is a difference between ‘cannot’ and ‘will not’,” she corrected with a faint smirk. “And what of you? You are no puppet to blood magic, but you are no demon, either. A Fade spirit, perhaps?” she mused, her attention in the man wavering in favor of talking mostly to herself. “But what would a Fade spirit want with possessing a desiccated corpse? Strange...”

 

The spirit seemed taken aback. It was clear that he hadn’t yet mastered the more finite aspects of operating a human body, but the faint widening of his eyes seemed evidence enough. “You can tell I am no demon?” he asked.

 

“Of course I can,” Megaera snorted with a swarthy smirk. “I can tell just by the sound of your voice. Tell me: what is your virtue? Righteousness?”

 

“Justice,” he answered at once.

 

“Megaera Hawke,” she offered in turn, turning back to face him and standing on the tips of her toes in order to peer into his eyes. “My, the magic used to lodge you in that corpse was... _abrupt,”_ she coughed, not wishing to insult the spirit by speaking her true opinion of the shoddy work put into the binding. “Your true coloring doesn’t even shine through.”

 

Justice tightened his jaw and straightened up, as if feeling a little self-conscious under her scrutiny. “My possession of this corpse was, as you said, abrupt. But what do you mean, my ‘true coloring?’ Are you privy to some sort of information that I am not?”

 

“Spirits of Justice tend to radiate blue light,” she explained. “Like the afternoon sky; bright and pure. And, I’ll have you know, I happen to be a Fade naturalist. I know a great deal about spirits like you. Demons, as well.”

 

“A... Fade naturalist? Do you cavort with demons, then?” His eyes narrowed once more, his curiosity waning in favor of skepticism.

 

“A specialist in Fade ecology and biology. I _study_ beings from your realm. I do not _cavort_ with them.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I can. How long have you been bound to that body? The stitching is still fresh, so it couldn’t be long. No more than a few weeks, by my reckoning.” She clucked her tongue and shook her head, rudely prodding at the exposed flesh of his upper arm. “Poor you. The magic binding you is so weak your vessel is rotting with you inside it. That mustn’t be pleasant at all.”

 

Justice took a precautionary step back in order to avoid more of her poking and prodding. “I am told that some humans suffer from maladies of the mind. Madness, I think was what it was called. Is that it? Are you mad?” he asked, clearly more than a little perturbed.

 

Megaera rocked back on her heels and folded her arms over her breasts again. “Perhaps a little lyrium addled, but not enough to truly impact my mental faculties,” she admitted, tugging at a lock of hair on her head.

 

An idea struck her, then.

 

With a small wince, she plucked a few strands of her silver hair from her head and held them out to the spirit, grinning knowingly. “Take them.”

 

“You _are_ mad,” he scoffed, staring at the glittering strands of hair as though they were poisonous serpents.

 

“Is it the nudity that calls my sanity into question?” she huffed, looking down at her bloodspattered self. “Because I can assure you that I have a very good reason for that. Furthermore, as a Fade spirit, you shouldn’t be so disgruntled by my state of undress. Now here: take these,” she insisted, rolling the strands of hair between her fingers.

 

Justice’s hand snapped out and snatched the strands from her, if only to quiet her demands.

 

“This...” the spirit breathed, the eyes of his host body going wide as he clenched the strands of hair in his fist. “Lyrium? It sings like lyrium! How...?”

 

“A rather unconscionable number of lyrium potions and too much exposure to raw deposits in the Fade; proof enough that I am what I say,” she explained with a soft smile as the first spear of sunlight crested the eastern horizon and lit her eyes and hair with golden fire.

 

Rapt by the sweet song of the lyrium hair in his fingers and still green to the unexpected moments of beauty in the mortal world, Justice found himself staring rather intensely at the mage before him. Her irises _burned_ with the light of the sun, even through the glazing of darkspawn blood spattered across her nose and cheeks. The nearest thing he could compare the brilliance of her hair in the morning light to was the dewy spider’s web he had seen the day before - but truly, that couldn’t carry a candle compared to _this._

 

“Oh dear,” Megaera murmured, glancing over his shoulder to the horizon. “Mother won’t let me hear the end of it if I’m not there when she rises,” she sighed and, with a quick vault on her long legs, threw herself into the river again. Justice briefly wondered if the woman’s mother was somehow _in_ the river, but quickly reminded himself that such a thought was preposterous. She was merely swimming in order to wash away the darkspawn blood and return to her clothing.

 

Once dressed, Megaera turned back to the Fade spirit and waved. “Should we meet again, you really ought to let me draw you!” she called. To Justice’s surprised, he actually waved back, and caught himself rolling the strands of lyrium hair between his fingers as the woman beamed at him and darted off into the forest from whence she came.

  
He couldn’t be sure whether it was by his will, or perhaps the will of his body’s former inhabitant, but he couldn’t resist the urge to follow after her.


End file.
